Refereeing a meeting last week between the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority and Northern Virginia officials over the still spiraling cost of Dulles Rail, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood gave MWAA 30 days to compile a list of cost reductions to make the stalled Phase 2 more palatable to increasingly skittish local politicians. But even LaHood can’t fill this money hole. Bait-and-switch is defined as “a form of fraud” in which customers are “baited” by advertising that offers them a product for a tantalizingly low price — before they’re told that the advertised item is no longer available and they’re then “switched” to a more expensive one. That’s a great description of Dulles Rail.
In 2002, when Fairfax County officially adopted heavy rail as the “locally preferred alternative,” the public was told that the entire 23-mile Metrorail extension to Washington Dulles International Airport could be built for the low, low price of $3.5 billion. That was the “bait,” and practically every elected official in Northern Virginia took it — hook, line and sinker.
When the cost of Phase 1 hit $3.5 billion, however, and even the Federal Transit Administration could not justify the project’s cost-effectiveness, Dulles Rail was broken up into two sections (“switch”) to disguise the fact that the total cost would double in less than a decade.
Another switch occurred after the Dec. 29, 2006, agreement signed by the Virginia Department of Transportation and MWAA, which projected that tolls on the Dulles Toll Road to finance Phase 2 would start at 60 cents and gradually climb to $4.96 over the next 50 years — a sevenfold increase.
But even that looks like a bargain compared to the $15 tolls MWAA needs to collect by 2030 to raise enough cash to make principal and interest payments on the revenue bonds it needs to finance Phase 2 construction.
The 2006 agreement assured Dulles Toll Road users that their tolls would gradually increase to about 10 bucks a day over 50 years (“bait”), but MWAA told investors it planned to collect $30, or three times that amount, two decades sooner (“switch”).
MWAA also claimed that assuming control of the revenue-producing toll road would allow it to fund the state’s portion of Phase 1 and both the state and federal share of Phase 2, originally projected to cost $2 billion (“bait”).
“This ensures the costs of Metrorail for its entire length,” former MWAA President James E. Bennett said in a Dec. 21, 2005, Washington Post article. Now MWAA claims it can’t build the second leg for less than $3.5 billion (“switch”).
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is one of a handful of public officials brave enough to tell the public the truth about former Gov. Tim Kaine’s irresponsible transfer of a revenue-producing state asset to the unelected and unaccountable MWAA Board.
“When Kaine gave that puppy away, he gave it totally away. He left no serious strings for pullback. He really sold us out on that — we got nothing of value for that giveaway,” Cuccinelli said in a recent radio interview on WMAL-AM.
“Loudoun County is waking up to what Fairfax never did, and that is the economic boondoggle versus the transportation benefits that you get. The cost-benefit just is not there.”
If LaHood was really serious about holding down the cost of Dulles Rail, he would have demanded a forensic audit. Instead, he’s just going through the motions while warning all the parties involved that the federal government “is not a bottomless pit.”
Perhaps, but Dulles Rail certainly is. Why hasn’t the top transportation official in the country figured that out by now?
Barbara F. Hollingsworth is The Examiner’s local opinion editor.
